Pick a Tree
by 123nnana
Summary: Being without Max was like being without a wing. I felt incomplete. I remembered those times with her, that twinkle in her eyes when she looked at me. I loved her. So much. Post-FANG. Sweet, kind of fluffy in the second chapter. TWO-SHOT! Fax.
1. Fang

**Hello, readers of Earth. Hmmm...that sounded better in my head. Anyways, hello and good day. So, I was re-reading **_**Saving the World and other Extreme Sports**_** again, for like, the billionth time (hey I was bored!) the other day, and I was suddenly inspired whilst (no I'm not British, I just think that that word is much more sophisticated than "while") reading about the part where Max had been all loopy from the Valium. So, read on!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride. JP does, unfortunately.**

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What the hell?

Fang couldn't understand what was going on. There was some weird kind of moisture welling up in his eyes, hot and threatening to spill over. Then he realizes that they're _tears_.

Well. That's peculiar. Fang hadn't cried since the days where he had lived at the School, being experimented on and tested on. He wasn't used to this feeling.

When had the tears started forming? Had it been when he had gazed at the large house, his home, for the last time? Or when he had written the note, the note that explained everything he was doing, why he was doing it, and when he would see _her_ again.

And suddenly, the tears spilled over, running down his face hard and fast, and he landed in a forest not too far away from the house. He leaned against the broad trunk of a tree, his dark, shaggy hair probably getting covered with twigs and leaves. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the tears prevented anything from coming into sight, and for some reason, her face kept swimming in his vision.

Her face at the wedding just an hour or two ago, smiling and laughing as she watched Angel and Gazzy try to dance, the twinkle in her eyes as she talked with him, her long, chestnut brown hair sparkling in the sun. How beautiful she looked, cleaner and happier than he had ever seen Max in her whole life. Too bad he'd never see her again. At least, not for a long time anyway.

Who knew why those stupid scientists couldn't just leave them alone. They couldn't just create some new hybrids that didn't have minds and did whatever they told them to, and leave the flock alone. Oh, but they had created a new hybrid. Dylan, the incarnation of pure perfection, Dylan. Anger welled up inside him, and, furiously, he punched a tree as hard as he could, and it swayed from the force. Stupid Dylan. Fang knew that none of the chaos that was happening in their lives was his fault, and yet he just couldn't bring himself to be amiable in any way towards him. He was programmed, like a robot, to_ love_ Max. Even if Max acted like a total bitch towards him—which Fang knew she would never do—he would still _love_ her. Because, according to Angel, he was designed to be her _perfect other half_. Designed, like some kind of doll. He was a fake, and had no emotions of his own. But still, Fang was jealous of him.

Jealous because he could be with Max, jealous because no scientists would be knocking on their door anymore asking her to save the world anymore, now that Fang was gone and Dylan was there. Because mad scientists had created Dylan, just for this purpose. They had gotten what they wanted.

It was like a game of chess. Yeah, that was a good analogy for it. Dr. Gunther-Hagen and his cronies were the queen, and the Earth was the king, the thing that all the other pieces had to desperately guard, because if it reached any harm at all, the game would be lost. Dylan was the rook, and everybody else was a pawn. Including Fang. Including Max.

There was no way to win this game though, no matter how good you were at chess (and Fang was pretty good. He could beat Iggy, at least, and it was pretty weird how good Iggy was at chess considering he was blind). It would always be a draw, always had been a draw. The flock had never won this game, and never could. In chess you had to make sacrifices, and no matter how large they may be, nothing matters as long as you win the game.

But still, this sacrifice had been too much. Max was a part of him, and being without her was like missing a wing. She was his life, and without her he felt like he could barely survive. But he had to, for the sake of the precious Earth, for the greater good, and it didn't matter if his heart ached so much that he felt like he could barely stand, because it was for the _greater good_. Fang felt so much like Dumbledore right now that it was insane, but that was the truth. Every hardship the flock had to face, every sacrifice they had to make didn't make any difference, as long as the end result was that the Earth would be safe.

He would survive without Max just like she was surviving without him. Then again, she had the whole flock there to comfort her, as well as _Dylan_, but if Fang knew her as well as he thought he did, their comfort wouldn't help her at all. Max and him had so much common, and like how nobody could cheer Fang up except for Max, nobody could do the same for her.

She was way too stubborn, but it was one of the things he loved so much about her. As well as her chocolate brown eyes, her long brown hair, the feel of her lips on his when they kissed. She was everything he could ever want. He loved her so much his heart started to thump faster just thinking about her.

And suddenly, he remembered back before the fall of Itex, before Max had gotten her chip taken out. He remembered what she had said to him when she had been high on Valium:

"_I _love_ you. I love you _sooo_ much_."

Fang rathered enjoyed her delirious mumbling, though, at the time, he had been quite flabbergasted at hearing her say something like that to him, even if she _was_ high. He thought back to when he had teased her about it.

"_Pick a tree. I'll go carve our initials in it_."

It seemed like a, no _two_, lifetimes ago. Giving a bitter smile, Fang pulled his pocketknife out of his backpack and got to work.

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**Wow. That was a lot of run-on sentences. Review for the sake of Fang's hotness!**


	2. Max

I felt strangely empty flying through the air, the wind rushing at me. Flying was the one thing that could always calm me down, make me feel a little saner. I felt like there was a shard of ice in my heart, making it hard to breathe.

Do you ever wish there was a redo button for life? I do, all the time.

You know what would be even better? One of those magic remote controls, like in Click, where you can just press a button and rewind whatever you want, or pause time for as long as you want.

If I had one of those remotes, I would rewind my life back to Total and Akila's wedding. Right before Fang left. When he had said he wanted to go home, I should have asked to go with him, but I didn't, because I'm a complete idiot. But, if Fang really wanted to leave, then even if I had come with him, he would have just left during the night, or the next day. You couldn't stop him if he had his mind set on something. He was so stubborn.

But still. I could have paused time during those moments when I was with him, when it was just the two of us. Because God knows that those moments could have been much longer than the average time they were.

But every good thing has to end at some point. Unfortunately.

Life seems to have gotten so much harder ever since he left. I never noticed before how his presence, just knowing that he was somewhere in the house, could calm me down so easily. Without him, I'd been even more paranoid and jumpy than usual, like something could happen at any second. And I didn't even think that that was possible.

Angel was still an annoying pain in the ass, but she hadn't been as irritating lately. She'd been trying to keep the traitorous comments and remarks on the downlow, and sometimes it felt as though she was my little girl again, looking up to me and trusting in all my decisions. But, just like everything else in my life, those moments were over just as soon as they came.

Nudge had been oddly quiet lately. Well, quiet for her, so, she'd just been talking as much as a normal person would, which didn't make me feel any better. Iggy and Gazzy hadn't blown up a single thing in the past week, and both usually just sat couped in their room most of the day.

And then there was Dylan. I refused to consider him part of the flock, because he was still and outsider to our family. We'd only known him for like, the past 2 months, and nothing had gone right ever since he'd been here.

I kept remembering Fang's last words to me, just finally realizing the double meaning in them.

"_Don't worry. I'll be fine, you stay here and have fun. It's not the first time you've gone anywhere without me, and it probably won't be the las_t."

A lot of unimaginable, terrible things have happened to me in my life, but Fang had always been there with me throughout everything. Now he was gone.

My eyes closed and suddenly, the weight of everything that happened in the past week crashed upon me with such force that I found it hard to fly. My wings started to flap feebly, and I used as much energy as I had left to steer towards a forest with tall, green trees. I skittered to a halt at the edge of the forest and walked into the the grove, where the foliage immediately covered me like a shield, dimming the amount of sunlight in the hot, summer day.

Despite the heat, I was cold, and felt as though someone had replaced the blood in my veins with lead. I leaned back against the trunk of a tree and slowly slid down to the bottom, finding myself unable to stand. And then I did something I had been fighting back the whole week, something I had refused to do in the proximity of any of my flock members. I bent my head down onto my knees and cried.

As the first tears spilled out, hot and salty, I couldn't help but remember the last time I had seen Fang. His dark eyes gazing at me, impassive as usual. His stupid, shiny hair sticking up on one end, the way it always did. That little half-smile he did on instinct whenever he saw me.

Why did I have to save the world? I'm sure that Itex must have had tons of other recombinant pets, so why couldn't -Dazs get one of them to do his work for him? Why me? I mean, I know I'm wonderful, but there has to be someone out there who can do a much better job of saving the world than me. Isn't there?

Frankly, I don't understand how me getting together with Dylan is going to help anybody. Maybe the key to saving the world is me being miserable every second of the day. Not that being with Dylan would make me miserable. Well, it wouldn't, if I didn't already have a perfect other half. Dylan meant nowhere near as much to me as Fang did. He was nothing like Fang, and never would be. Fang had always been there for me, and now he wasn't.

It was totally insane how emo-sad I had been since he left. Not that I let any of the flock see my emotions, because I'd gotten quite good at hiding them over the years. Something I learned from Fang.

I loved him so much that my heart ached every time I thought about him, so much that I felt like I couldn't go on without him, but I had to, for the sake of my flock. And what's the fun of a life that you don't want to live?

Fang was everything I could ever want, could ever need. His dark eyes, black hair, the feel of his strong, rough hands gripping mine. Nobody knew him better than me. That mildly curious look he had that meant that he was actually burning with curiosity, the indiscernible twitch of his jaw when he was trying not to look angry, the slight twinkle in his eyes when he was hopeful about something. That weird look on his face whenever he kissed me, loving and passionate and filled with emotion, something that Fang didn't show very often. The smugness in his voice whenever he won an argument with me. God, I missed it so much.

Hesitantly, brokenly, I got up, not bothering to try to wipe away the freeze-dried tears on my face. Slowly, I walked down the row of trees towards the light at the end, realizing that it had been a while since I had left on my little joyride and that the flock was probably going crazy with worry by now. But I didn't care. I just closed my eyes and felt the rough bark of the trees on my hand, not wanting to think, to just shut down my mind to stop from experiencing this pain I was feeling.

My fingers felt a groove in the bark of one tree, and I stopped. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, to see that I was standing in front of a remarkably large tree. I looked at the place where my fingers had stopped, inspecting the curved groove ingrained into the bark. I leaned back realizing it was a shape.

A heart.

And inside, in a messy, beautiful scrawl that I recognized all too well was written;

_Fang + Max 4ever_

I felt a fresh wave of tears coming on, and squeezed my eyes shut. Keeping the palm of my hand on the words, I leaned back and whispered "_That idiot_."

I smiled a watery smile and shook my head.

He was my idiot. Wherever he was, he was _my_ idiot. And he always would be my idiot.

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**Fang's still hot, but that could all change if you don't review!**


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